Saturday, 21 May 2011

The 64th International Cannes Film Festival has been on this month and as it is heavily sponsored by Chopard, the couture jewels on the red carpet have definitely been worth watching!

It was nice to see it wasn’t just diamonds at this event – coloured gems definitely made their presence known and it was a lovely change from white diamonds.

Uma Thurman (at top), on this year’s jury, wore these chandelier earrings set with 34 pear-shaped emeralds for a total of 54cts together along with a more understated emerald bracelet. The emeralds just glowed even from a distance and gave some colour to her all white ensemble. Another day, she wore this little diamond cuff. (I’m not jealous, really, I’m not… much!)

Model Bianca Balti went the green route as well, wearing this amazing De Grisogono emerald necklace. I adore the intense colour - she carries it well.

Rosario Dawson had a showstopper necklace by Faraone Mennella of aquamarine and diamonds and look at the size of those rocks!

The co-president of Chopard, Caroline Gruosi-Scheufele wore a peacock bracelet set with diamonds, emeralds, tsavorite garnets and sapphires with matching earrings. I’m not a fan of this ensemble, but to each their own!

Former Miss World, Aishwarya Rai wore Chopard diamonds - 12cts of pink diamonds in her ears and a whopping 53ct emerald cut diamond on her hand.

Salma Hayek wore pearls with her diamonds in a cuff bangle and earrings.

Although hardly well known in Australia, Italian fashion blogger, Chiara Ferragni wore this Chopard mixed gemstone bracelet and earrings. I love the delicate colour of the gems yet the overall substantial size – I think this might be one of my favourite jewellery sets seen on the red carpet this year.

Wednesday, 11 May 2011

I know, I’ve been a VERY bad blogger. I’ve posted very sporadically and I can’t seem to get back into the ‘groove’.

We had a very social April with lots of family coming and going and even some non-family social occasions. I’ve had two shows on since my last post … and only someone else who does shows can appreciate how much work and time they take up beforehand! I’ve also been busy running children around – to Sydney, to piano lessons, to school events. Hubby has been no better, he’s been to travelling off to seminars and meetings, having teleconferences at home (which I somehow ended up taking minutes for!?), attending the National Aerobatics Comp (he came second in Advanced) and the rest of the time busy on the farm.

The latest in the long line of things to do was to pick our olives. We have a few hundred olive trees planted on the property. Some are dryland and planted in tree lines (above), some are irrigated in the house yard (water makes SUCH a difference, the latter are huge). The photo below is post-harvest, we obviously missed a few but they are up high and we forgot the step ladder (oops).

There are some jobs you can automate, but olive picking isn’t one of them. So yesterday, hubby and I picked, by hand, our 6 heavily laden mature trees, in about 5 hours, stripping them fairly well to a height we could reach, onto sheets spread out on the ground. After tipping the sheets into tubs, we spent another hour or so picking through the 50 odd kilograms of olives and removing the branches and leaves. They looked so pretty in their tubs – a lovely mix of green and black (deep purple really) ovals.

I had to dash off into town then so hubby took them down to a neighbour who has an olive press to extract the oil. He then took cattle to the saleyards in Mudgee and returned via the neighbour with 4 very large (2-3 litres each) jars of olive oil. Its the first time we've made oil, usually I just pickle the crop for eating.

Considering the amount we use, I reckon these jars could do us for a couple of years. Note that these are almost opaque as they are unfiltered. They need to be stored for a while to let the sediment drop and then the oil is decanted from the top down. The green colour is a also a sign of fresh, first press, virgin olive oil.

To say yesterday was tiring would be an understatement. I’m so pleased to have the next couple of days at home, even though I have a ‘to do’ list that seems a mile long.

To celebrate autumn (my favourite season of the year), I’ve decided that every purchase made up until 30 May 2011 will go in a draw to win a pair of these. What’s even better is that I will customize them completely to your preferences – peacock or white keshi pearls, a selection of coloured gems to chose from, and either sterling silver or gold fill.

So, if you’ve been thinking about a pre-winter jewellery purchase, now might be a good time and perhaps you will win a pair of earrings too!